DavidG, Taera thanks for the support and I like your additional ideas too, Taera.
Alas, though, we can't agree on everything. We will have to agree to disagree on PPB. I do not think they are overpowered. I will admit they "might" be slightly overpowered, but that's all. A very minor tweak indeed.
Face it, their usefulness as a shield skipper is quite limited. I've played games against the Gold AI and seen phased shields long before I even researched Physics 2, let alone PPB's. Their strength as an ordinary gun, though, is quite good, so that is the only area where a minor reduction might be accepted by me.
If you want overpowered, look at the Null-Space Projector. Costs the same as PPB and in fact is a cheaper at the highest level (only 3 levels compared to 5 for PPB). Is deadly powerful at even the first level and everytime it hits, it does serious damage to crucial components! It is least effective when hitting shield generators since it skips ALL shields (and armor as well) anyway. But even that has an up side: now your ordinary weapons can break through to the heart of the target ship that much quicker.
And what tech is the defense against it? Beats me. I haven't found one yet. Your only recourse is battle tactics.
That it only fires every third round, I have found to be an advantage in simultaneous games. Your ships fire then skitter out of the way and let more ordinarily armed ships take the heat. When recharged they move in to deliver another devastating bLast. At the end of a successful battle all Null-Space ships unharmed, four PPB ships destroyed. The numbers vary of course, but that is a common scenario in my battles.
I don't know why I'm spewing all this, I don't want this weapon changed either. I love it!
Now how about something underpowered? Shield Regenerators. Either these things have to give a lot more bang for the kiloton or have a lot fewer kilotons. It takes 12 top level regenerators to recharge ONE shield 5 in one turn. In that same space you could put 6 more shield generator 5's -- 1800 shield points! Is there any question which component I'm going to choose? Before we work on the small imbalance with PPB's lets work on this one, please.
Kim
Re: PPB Balance Issue, Follow-up poll.
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